


Paths

by paintedfences



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, Episode: s03e21 Same As It Never Was, Gen, Grief, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2018-10-20 08:17:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedfences/pseuds/paintedfences
Summary: After three days in another future, Don struggles to adjust. Another look at SAINW - what happened while Don was there, and what happened after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I need more SAINW aftermath in my life. It breaks my heart the show didn’t give Don that - he deserved it. So here’s my take. Heavy on the h/c, some disturbing themes, PTSD and depression. This will be a multichapter, I’m writing as I go. Please if you can let me know what you think, that would be amazing - I'm not very confident writing in this fandom yet so any feedback would be wonderful!

When Don counts the time up, he was in that other place for three days.  
He doesn’t want to think of it, but he does, constantly. It’s a dark river running under everything he sees, mirrored similarities in gestures, looks and words, one reality overlaying another.

Every time it happens it makes his heart seize and his stomach flip and his palms prickle with sweat, and it’s stupid – and he feels stupid, and powerless, and weak and _scared_ – but it’s physical, like a cold finger up his spine, like he’s being fucked with. Like he’s being _watched_.

Mikey with that frown he gets when he’s thinking, Raph cleaning his sais with a slow, familiar sweep of cloth.

Draco didn’t want to kill them. He wanted to take them apart, bit by bit. And how better to do it than to let him know he’ll be the instrument of their destruction? That he’ll be the one to fuck it up, but not how, or when.

Oh god, he’s scared.

Donnie’s coming to understand that he might not be okay. He might not be okay at all.

***

The light’s so bright after the gloom of the chamber, the smell of blood is thick in his nostrils and he’s aware his knees and hands are spattered with gore, but he launches himself at Mikey and Raph anyway, shaky and sweating but so relieved he can hardly speak, and he just gabbles some crap at them all, and Mikey’s bemused, open face makes him _hurt_.

Then they’re fighting again. When the adrenaline surge of battle peaks and everything around him stretches and slows and sharpens to hyper-realistic detail, he abruptly realises he is clean. Not a trace anywhere on him of blood or bone or grey matter when seconds ago he was soaked.

After the battle it’s all prettymuch white noise to him. He takes it in, but it doesn’t touch him. He looks for his bo, only to realise he lost it in that other place, and thinking about it laying where he dropped it on the floor of the dead Michelangelo’s quarters, the room they shared with the sagging grey mattress and the damp seeping in from the walls and the sea of bottles and trash and fucking needles all over the floor makes his skin prickle. He remembers standing there, trying to keep his face expressionless, while that other Michelangelo laughed at him.

The goosebumps blend with the tingle and stomach-lurch of the portal, the feeling of your atoms being turned inside out, and then they are back in the lair.

“I hate that method of travel,” Splinter sighs, and his dark eyes move over them. “You are all unharmed, my sons. Thank goodness.”

“Thanks to you, Sensei.” Leo bows, Splinter pats him on the shoulder and sighs again.

“Debrief in fifteen. Mikey, can you fix us something?” Leo is already moving toward the showers, and as Mikey fires off a little salute and starts toward the kitchen Casey stands up awkwardly.

“I, uh, I’ll leave you guys to it. I guess you don’t really feel like that monster movie marathon any more, huh?”

“Thanks bro.” Raph sounds about as tired as Don feels. Someone’s tried to kill them again. Kind of a buzz-kill. “I’ll come by and see you tomorrow.”

***

Outside their lone functioning shower room Don leans against the wall. He can’t tell them. Ever. Lines have been drawn here that he can’t see, and he knows, he _knows_ with a certainty that’s like a lead weight in his stomach, that if he puts one foot on the wrong track it’ll spin them all off into the dark. All roads around him lead to a fifty-foot drop.

Raph slopes up the hall and comes to lean beside him with a sigh.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” It comes out wrong. He winces internally, even as Raph squints at him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He injects more colour into the word – Raph’s expression clears so it’s enough to get him by, but then it’s a moot point anyway because Mikey is skipping up the hall, pausing to pirouette to the bathroom door and rattle the knob, sing-songing “Oh fearless lead-er! Don’t forget to leave us some hot water!”

Don’s stomach clenches painfully. He folds his arms and presses them into his middle – hard against the knot twisting there. He breathes slowly.  He keeps his posture otherwise relaxed, and turns his face to his brothers.

“-yeah? Well you’re not the only one who got a stadium full’a people screaming their name. Team Fitt dominated!”

“Pfft. Did they give you a medal? Cause they actually _literally_ gave me a medal-”

The door opens, and Leo steps out in a cloud of steam. As he moves to pass Don their eyes meet, Leo’s clear blue and amused, having caught the tail end of the boasting, but then their look shifts into something like concern.

Don slips past Leo and shuts the door, locking it behind him. He ignores the quiet murmur of voices from the other side, purposefully blocking out any words which he can piece together into meaning – he’ll deal with that later.  He focuses on untying his belt and kneepads. It’s harder than it should be, all of a sudden his hands are trembling, not cooperating, but he can ignore that, too.

When his fingers get to his mask they stutter and slip, and then it’s like his body stops doing what he wants it to altogether and just for a second, just for a few seconds he sinks down to his knees, laying his head against the cool tile and trying to calm the too-loud beating of his heart, the twisting of his guts.

It’s cool and quiet, the world shrunk to a comfortable distance. He breathes. He shoves the throng of images and voices back, and tries to empty his mind. 

He killed them all. These brothers might be here, but the others died, they _all died_. His throat burns, but he digs his nails into his palms and shoves it back, shoves it down. Not now. Not here. He breathes hard, and forces his mind blank.

It’s a minute or two before he realises he should have started showering by now. He knows it will seem odd. He needs to be quick, then.

He gets up, shoving his mask off to join the rest on the floor, and steps into the tub and under the thundering of the hot, hot water.


	2. 2

When his skin is tingling with heat and he’s soaped and rinsed twice, then three times, Don shuts off the water. He wipes a clear streak in the steamed-up mirror and tries to look himself in the eye. Looking at his own stupid fucking face makes him cringe, a flutter of self-hatred that makes him feel sick in the pit of his stomach, and he drops his eyes. But then he scrubs his hands over his face, and tries again. Better.

“Hello,” he says quietly into the mirror. “Hi. Yes, good thanks. Thirty seconds. Yes.” He follows up with a smile. Ugh, not good. And again? Passable.

He scrapes his belt, mask and pads off the floor, and a flicker of revulsion runs through him, no caked-on gore, just his mind trying to reconcile _clean_ and _not-clean_ at the same time. He’ll throw them in the trash later. (What he really wants to do is to toss them in the incinerator he built in the lab for medical waste and biohazards and crank it up until it obliterates them, but that would be crazy. So trash it is.)

He opens the bathroom door and Raph looks directly at him, right into his eyes like he’s trying to look inside him too. It feels like a brick to the face, and Don feels a flare of anger – _Leo_ – but it crumbles to ashes even as he looks away.

“All yours,” he mutters, and heads off down the hallway.

Maybe he’s the only one who notices these things. Maybe he sees it where the others don’t, these little eddies of action and interaction that usually spell disaster, in one way or another, for him. He’d tried to explain it once to Leo, who’d looked at him with his brow furrowed, kind but not understanding, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re just… sensitive, Don. We get that.”

Heading for the kitchen, Don registers Mikey falling into step beside him.

“Ramen okay, bro? Sorry, it’s stock-up day tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” he says lightly, and then, because he can feel Mike is going to say something else, and he doesn’t think he can talk, not yet, not naturally, he turns left instead of right, away from the bright glare of the kitchen toward his lab.

He slips through the steel door and closes it behind him without locking. Nonetheless, the feel of it at his back is comforting, as is the cleanness of the air-conditioned atmosphere, as is the dim light and the quiet, electronic hum – like sliding into a cool, dim pool.

The equipment – which in the end was useless, utterly useless – blinks quietly, and Don’s heart lurches as his eyes come to rest on the incinerator, squat and unlovely between the counter where he sets bio samples to propagate and the medbay. The lever is cold in his hand, it clanks as it opens its oily maw to him, and the wet thud the fabric makes as it hits metal makes him feel sick. The heavy metal door clangs shut, and he flicks the switch and then has to step back from the sudden, leaping of the flames.

Sensitive.

He doesn’t want to be sensitive. He doesn’t want to feel at all. He wants to batter things, smash it all to useless shit, throttle the scream buzzing to get out past his teeth, peel off his filthy feeling skin and throw it into the incinerator too–

“Don?”

Leo is standing behind him. He realises he is breathing hard. Don forces his muscles to relax, and turns to Leo, who is looking uneasily from him, to the flickering furnace.

“Food’s ready.”

Don smiles. “Sure. Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

The wind felt hot and gritty in that other place, and everything smelled of something chemical, something like rubber or asphalt.

Mike grunted when Don asked about it. “Environment’s prettymuch fucked. It’s fifteen degrees hotter than it should be. Awesome for roaches, not so much for anything else.”

Mike’s mood had been black ever since April said she’d try to contact Raph and Leo, and for the two hours they’d been in the control room with April he hadn’t spoken to or even looked at Don unless he had to. It stung a little, but Don noticed Mike wasn’t talking to April either, or any of the members of her team who came in and out.

Mike ignored everyone and hung back to hug the wall, letting April run Don through what felt more and more like a post-mortem on this world.

The Shredder’s operations were horrifying in terms of both scale and detail; work camps, mass disappearances, collapsed ecosystems, starvation. She told him mutants could walk among the humans openly now, and then maybe because of something she saw in his face, April dropped her voice down low and told him some things a part of him had on some level always expected, things about fear and anger and exactly how careful he’d need to be around anyone outside of her people.

He ducked his head to scroll through some readouts, and then April put her hand on his arm.

She was smiling sadly at him. “Hey, it’s okay. We have you now.”

Her face was all eyes, cheeks blades of bone under the sockets; there was no meat on her, on any of them.

“For what it’s worth.” He tried not to sound as scared, or as incredibly, sickeningly out of his depth as he actually was. A thought beat insistently at the back of his mind:  _Leo. Hang in there until Leo gets here._

April squeezed his arm gently. “It’s worth more than you know."

A soft scoff came from the wall. April sat up, and said briskly, “It’s late. Mike, can you take Don to get something to eat and fix him up somewhere to stay?”

“Sure thing, boss.” Despite the edge of sarcasm, Mike detached himself from the wall.

April’s mouth tightened, but after she’d hugged Don and told him she’d see him in the morning, she put a hand on Mike’s shoulder and squeezed once. Mike didn’t look at her, and as Don followed him out of the room, watching the tightness of his shoulders, something clicked into place;  _he’s ashamed._

They passed through corridors with peeling brickwork painted an insipid yellow. The  basement of an old school, then. Smart.

"In here.”

Mike led Don to a long, low room filled with benches and tables. It was lit by two flickering fluorescent tubes, and mostly empty, bar one small, ragged group who stared at them without speaking. No one here looked particularly pleased to see him. Or Mike, come to think of it.

The back of Don’s neck prickled uncomfortably, but Mike sagged into a chair and waved a hand toward where a series of battered serving dishes sat on a table. “Get something while you can, the next shift’s due in soon.”

“Aren’t you eating?"

Mike didn’t answer, taking a small tin from inside his jacket pocket, and starting to roll a cigarette.

When Don raised the metal cover, the food was scant portions of greying meat and a few shrivelled potatoes.

Everyone here was so  _thin_. Even though Mike had four inches on him, broader shoulders and a bigger shell, his skin had a waxy pallor, and it hung loose over his bones, like he’d lost muscle.

Standing there with the cover in his hand, Don was acutely aware of how he must look to everyone here, of how his body – until now just a part of him, nothing remarkable or even noticeable about it – was almost offensively plush, almost gross. He took a cup of water and a small piece of bread back to the table, and felt a rush of guilt even at that.

“Something wrong with the food?”

The bread was dry as old sponge; Don struggled to get enough moisture in his mouth to swallow, his heart fluttering in his chest. It was just so goddamn hard talking to this Mike.

“No. No, it’s fine. I’m. I’m just…”

Mike raised an eye-ridge.

Don paused, shut his eyes and opened them again, trying to focus his mind, his thoughts and emotions that darted and raced like minnows. He tried a small, sheepish smile, the one that always drew an answering smile from Mike, or Raph, or even Leo.

“I guess I’m not really hungry.”

“Huh.” Mike tapped the edge off his smoke. “Then you’re the first one in six months. Put it back then and let’s go.”

“Put… but I’ve already…’

Mike’s expression darkened. “Put it  _back_. If you won’t eat it, someone else will."

Skin burning, Don got to his feet, walked over to the table, and placed the piece of bread back where he’d got it. The other group were still watching him. From this angle, he could see two of the women were pregnant.

He didn't sit down again, instead stood by Mike, and tried to keep his voice even against surging anger. "Are we going then?"

“Yeah.” Without looking at him, Mike ashed his rollup and tossed it into the garbage can in a wide, perfect arc, and the brief flash of the incredible gymnastic ability that drove Leo so utterly crazy stung Don like a slap.

“C'mon, I'm tired.”

Don followed Mike out of the canteen, down another corridor. Mike didn’t look tired, he looked  _sick_. He was pale and clammy, and his eyes were intense, distant.

Don felt a surge of unease, and because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and because he felt the need, sudden and raw, to connect with Mike, in any way, any way at all, he asked, “How come you're not the cook? You were always so good at it back– uh, back home.”

“They don't want me to be,' Mike said shortly, and then, “You didn’t bring anything, right? You need a bedroll.”

Mike led him through a grubby door to a small, stifling store room. As Mike rummaged, Don looked around, and immediately saw one wall was almost wholly taken up with a jerry-rigged fuse box. Wires hung like trailing vines; without even trying he could see four loose connections.

“This is the power for everything?” Don moved closer; it got worse and worse the more he looked – and was that seriously gum? “Mike, this is dangerous. Really dangerous. Has April seen this?”

“Dunno if you noticed, dude, but April's busy.’ Mike pulled a bundle from a low shelf and tossed it at Don, already turning away. ‘C'mon.”

“Mike. Mikey-“ stumbling over his brother's name, his brother who wasn’t his brother, who was all wrong, wrong in ways he could barely put a name to, Don grabbed his shoulder, pulling Mike round to face him. “Can you just – can you please just look at me?”

Mike stared at him, teeth bared. Sweat was sheening his face; he was trembling. “I’m looking. So, what? What do you want?”

“I don’t…” Don tries to get the words out, aware he’s wringing his hands, a bad habit, an old habit, from when they were kids and the water in the tunnels echoing stopped him sleeping, and sees Mike’s eyes go to them. Don drops them in a slow, palms-out, palms-down motion, projecting a calm he doesn’t feel. “I feel like I don’t know you at all. Mike, it’s  _me_.”

Mike’s face twists; it’s an ugly look. “You ‘feel like’ you don’t know me because you don’t. I brought you here because in twenty seconds more they would have wasted you. Then April asked me to do this, so I’m doin’ it.” He laughs. “I've never been a subtle kinda guy, but I guess I've got to spell it out. I. Don’t. Want you here.” He spit a smile at him, and turned on his heel. “ _Bro._ ”

Don followed him, because what else could he do, and two corridors over Mike pushed open a door into a room that looked like a maniac’s cell.

“Make yourself at home.”

The trash was ankle deep, drifts of it deeper in some places – bottles, cans, papers, wet fabric, smashed brick, a mouldy mattress, the crunch of glass underfoot. It stank, of filth and piss and despair, and Don was blinking and blinking, heart thundering because until right now, until right this second he didn’t understand that no, he doesn’t know this Mike, and he doesn’t know this world, and he’s a stupid, naïve little – Mike was laughing at him, at whatever his face was showing, perching on the edge of his mattress and pulling out – a med kit?

Don’s mind tries to parse what he’s seeing as Mike fills a syringe from a small clear bottle, pulls off the cap that covers the stub of his arm, the blunt nub of it shocking, and shoots it into the meat on the underside.

Mike's already sinking back into the mattress, still chuckling, by the time Don has moved to grab him, too late, too late. He slurs in a tone lazy with a golden, taffy-stretched high, “Welcome back, brother of mine,” then harder, even as his eyes close and he goes boneless, “Go fuck yourself Don.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick one. Getting back to this story now. I want to tell it, and there's lots more that happens.

He doesn’t really remember getting out of the room, just slipping on trash, knocking a pile of empty cans with the hand he put out to steady himself. Then he’s outside in the corridor, leaning against the wall, damp breath bouncing back in his face and his heart pounding in his throat.

He tries to breathe. Oh shit, Mike, _shit_. His mind is screaming, panic like frozen volts arcing through him – Leo, where the fuck is Leo? Because deep down in his gut he knows _his_ Leo is infallible, _his_ Leo would literally die before he ever let anything like this- let any of them just-

His eyes are burning; he tastes salt in the back of his throat and knows he is about two seconds from losing his shit. No. _No_. _Get a grip, idiot._ And slowly, slowly - he starts to calm down. He finds his fingers clenched in the meat of his thighs; they ache when he releases them. He breathes. Pushes away from the wall.

With no real destination in mind, he follows the corridor back the way they came. After a minute he passes a familiar door, then pushing it open, recognises the storage room where they picked up his bedroll. The lights of power supply are blinking, the hulking mass of it clinging to the wall like some great malign growth. Cables hang like tangled veins.

 Don feels a sudden shock, that old familiar lurch of seeing a germ of something new within a broken object, something that beats with potential, with what it wants to become.

He talked about it to his Mike last winter, tried to explain the flutter in his chest, the energy that feels wired right into him from outside him, that he can’t resist it, that it’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to sleep when he gets like this, when his mind is buzzing with _yes_ and _rightness_ \- it’s that he _can’t_ , because he has to let it out or he’ll explode.

_‘...you know what I mean?’ he says, feeling lame._

_Mike flexes his shoulders as he considers; the metal is heavy and the angle is awkward._

_‘Kinda, yeah. I mean, not as much. When I’m drawing, sometimes.’ Mike’s shy about his drawing like he’s not about anything else. Don stays quiet in case there’s more. ‘I think Leo gets it too, with his swords.’ Neither of them mention Raph, because Raph never lets himself think he’s good at anything._

_And then they finish the sidecar and go to show the guys and Leo asks ‘Where’s the other half?’ and Mike says he’s missing the point and they argue about it until dinner. And it’s just another Thursday night._

Staring at the power supply, Don’s fingers twitch. Here’s something he can fix.


	5. Chapter 5

_Pat. Pat pat pat._

‘Hey.’  _Pat_. ‘Hey.’

Something’s hitting him in the face.

Awareness flares, and he rolls, and blinks awake to find himself in a defensive crouch under Mike’s outstretched hand.

‘Uh. Sorry.’ Mike looks beat. ‘Can I sit?

Still groggy, Don coughs and rubs his eyes. ‘Sure.’

Mike drags over a crate; Don’s sitting prettymuch where he dropped last night. Mike doesn’t meet his eyes; the silence is painful.

Mike clears his throat, then reaches behind him to pick something up, and holds out a mug. A scent which has been skimming the edge of Don’s consciousness suddenly has his full attention. He takes the mug and bringing it to his face, breathes in the steam.

‘Not coffee. Some kind of root, fucked if I know what. But people love it.’

It doesn’t taste right, earthier and less astringent, but Don senses the tingle of a mild stimulant, and the mug is warm in his hands. He drinks it slowly with his eyes shut, letting the fog dissipate, letting go of the ache in his shoulders, the bruised feeling in his chest. 

Mike’s trying. That’s something.

When he opens his eyes Mike is looking at the power supply behind him, blue eyes far away. ‘You fixed it.’  
  
‘Well, not really.’ Don looks round at his handiwork; without any proper tools bar what he could scrounge from the kitchen it’d taken him all night, but it’s a lot neater than it was, not to mention safe. ‘But it won’t short and burn the place down now. So sort of fixed.’  
  
‘Just like that, huh?’ Mikes voice is soft and strained, thick with something Don can’t bear, and Don’s eyes light on his lone hand, tiny slivers of nail stuck deep like crescent moons in swollen, painful-looking tips.

Don can’t stand it, he reaches out- ‘Mike-’

Mike wards him off with one big hand, eyes that fix him, agonised. ‘How old are you anyway? Eighteen?’  
  
And Don’s stupid fucking mouth says ‘Sixteen,’ and in the next second he hates himself.  
  
‘Fuck.’ Mike scrubs his hand over his eyes, takes a deep, shuddering breath, then looks at him again, his eyes drowning, barely seeming to see him. ‘Fuck. What is wrong with me.’

‘Nothing,’ Don says softly. Insistently. And reaches for Mike to grab him and make him  _listen_ , because Don is the fixer, the doctor, the one with all the solutions and he knows it’s true. ‘Nothing’s wrong with you.’

Mike barks a laugh, bats his hand away. He looks at Don then, really looks at him, his face battered and scarred, something unbearable in his eyes. ‘Where the hell did you go, Donny?’

Guilt like a stone in his chest. ‘I don’t know.’ He reaches for Mike again and grabs his hand, holds hard and tight. ‘I don’t know. I wish I did. But listen to me Mike,  _listen_ -’

Mike tries to pull away but Don holds fast. Weak as he is Mike is big, all corded muscle; he could break his wrist in a breath. But Mike won’t hurt him, Don knows it.   
  
‘I’m here. I’m right here. And I love you, okay?’ His throat hurts, the words aren’t coming right. ‘You know it Mikey. I love you so much.’

Mike makes an awful, strangled sound, and Don puts his arms around him to steady him, because Mike is shaking, he is shaking and trying to cover his face and Don is so sorry, he is so sorry, and he is telling him over and over. 

‘I got you,’ he whispers, because he has, he’s got his baby brother and he’s never, ever going to let him go. Mike’s face is pressed to his shoulder, his breath wet and agonised on Don’s neck. ‘I got you. And I’m gonna help you, okay bro?’

Mike sobs a laugh. Grips him tighter.

‘Any way. Any way I can.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love comments, let me know what you think!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don and Mike talk. Properly this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: Some subtle references to self injury.

When Mike’s recovered himself enough to talk, they sit on crates, almost knee-to-knee in a twilight that blinks in time with the circuit boards. It smells of dust and hot plastic, and one of Don’s hands is in Mike’s, the other on his shoulder, occasionally slipping down his arm in a slow, comforting sweep.

‘We holding hands now?’ Mikes voice is gruff, but Don hears the question within the question, and squeezes hard in answer.

‘Tell me everything,’ he says. ‘Properly this time.’

‘It’s hard to tell,’ Mike says slowly, and shudders a sigh. He seems more together now, though his eyes are still wet, a slow seep half-hidden by his ducked head.

‘I don’t mean in a ‘you-will-never-understand-my-inner-pain’ kind of way… more like, when things get so fucked up that there are, like,  _layers_  to the shit, like fuckin’ _sedimental layers_ ,  _oceans_  of it, how’d you make sense of it, you know? I can’t even separate out who said what to who, or who crossed what line. It’s a mess.’

Don squeezes Mike’s hand.  _I’m here. I’m listening_.

Mike pulls it away, rubs his forehead. ‘Do you… Remember the first time they really hurt Leo?’

It blindsides Don for a second. Then he’s remembering how the world fell away, narrowed to a pinhole view of just he and Leo, and the rise and fall of Leo’s chest, the flicker of his pulse under his fingers.

Only a dim awareness of the farmhouse kitchen, the others who handed him clean towels and rags when he asked for them. Butterfly sutures. Tape. Water. Coffee.

The camp bed next to the stove next to where they had him laid out, the light, torturous sleep, waking with every noise Leo made, thinking - _is that what it sounds like when a clot hits your lungs, and your blood vessels stretch and stretch and then burst, and you drown in your own blood? Is that what it sounds like when you die? Should we try to get a hold of some Heparin? Would I even know how to use it if we did?_

Firelight. Master Splinter’s hand on his forehead, stroking. Telling him to go back to sleep.

‘I remember,’ Don says.

‘Yeah,’ Mike sighs. ‘I bet. But remember how weird it was after? Like, Leo was  _majorly_  off, but looking back, I guess we all were.’

‘Yeah.’ He can’t deny it. It took months for things to go back to any kind of normal, and even then Leo was… not good. He remembers the taste of worry as a bitter constant in his mouth, even as something about what just Mike said niggles at him. He pushes it to the back of his mind.

‘Well take that, an’ magnify it. It just kept coming, Don. Like –  _bam_ \- Don’s gone.  _Bam_  – home’s gone.  _Bam_  – Casey’s gone. And then father.’ 

Mike grips his knee, and the tiny pock-marked craters that spatter his limbs catch the light.  _Blast burns_  – Don’s mind supplies, then from nowhere, he hears his father’s voice, the touch of his hand.  _Sleep, my son. I will watch now._

‘How did he die?’ Don hears himself ask. His ears are ringing, he desperately doesn’t want to know the answer.

Mike sighs, bites out one word. ‘Dogs.’ 

He coughs, keeps going. ‘Ripped him apart. We were tryna’… ah, fuck.’ Mike’s voice is shaky, he wraps his arm around his midsection, hugging himself. ‘I don’ wanna talk about this right now, okay?

‘Okay.’ Don squeezes his shoulder, gives in to his own weakness, his own need for comfort and leans in to hug him, head on his shoulder, holding tight. ‘Okay.’

Mike holds himself stiffly, but doesn’t push him off, and they stay like that for a little while, until Mike clears his throat, sniffs. Don settles back on his crate, though he can’t seem to let go of Mike’s hand.

Mike’s tone is resigned, matter of fact. ‘It got really fucked up with Leo and Raph. I mean, you’ll see how it is when they get here. Just – don’t think I didn’t try, okay?’

‘I wouldn’t-’ The words are barely out and Mike’s cutting him off, his voice rising.

‘I tried everything. I swear, I tried so hard to make them – make them be okay with each other again, even be able to, like, be in the same room. I mean not like it mattered because it all fell apart anyway and then they were gone too, but I fucking tried. Really, really hard.’

He laughs suddenly, and looks at Don with bright, savage eyes. ‘But then that was always my job, huh?’

Don’s heart lurches. This is too close to the bone. Too close to talking about things that their family just  _doesn’t_. Suddenly he wants Mike to shut up.

Maybe it shows on his face, because Mike smiles bitterly. ‘I am the King of Bullshit, bro. Don’t ever forget it.’

Before Don can open his mouth, Mike’s talking again, balancing on the edge of his crate and rocking it gently back and forth, hugging his arm over his midsection. His eyes are distant in that way that Don has grown to recognise and hate.

‘I’m not sayin’ being little bro was all bad. It was nice to be lazy sometimes. It was fun to give Raph shit. An’ give Leo shit. And sometimes even give you shit.’ A smile like a flash of moon behind cloud, gone as soon as glimpsed. ‘But I hated it too, man. Always being the dumbass. Never being allowed to change. Always picking- picking up the pieces.’

Don opens his mouth to protest, then stops. Is that true?

Mike’s watching his face.

‘Don’t feel bad,’ he says softly, ‘I’m a good liar. The best. Makes up for the lack of anything in my noggin, you know? Heh.’ He sniffs softly, clears his throat. ‘I guess I just couldn’t keep it up.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Don whispers, meaning everything and nothing all at once. Every time he’s called Mikey stupid, a dumbass, a liability washes in his stomach, with a bitter, queasy roll.  _Asshole. Assholes._

They left him.  _Mikey_ , who can light the world on fire with people around him, and wilts when he’s alone, who’s never held back a joke or a single crumb of love because he was scared of looking stupid, who was their pressure gauge and their court jester and their beating fucking heart all rolled into one.

Mike’s weeping again; he scrubs his eyes violently, shakes his head. ‘Don’t, man. Don’t listen to me. I’m a piece of shit.’

‘I don’t care if you’re a piece of shit,’ Don says – and it’s funny how easily the words come to him, he barely ever swears, and never where anyone can hear, but in this place it feels completely normal – ‘I honestly couldn’t care less, Mikey.’

Mike laughs a little. ‘I missed you Donnie.’

He sighs, and Don senses him steeling himself.

‘You ever- You ever feel  _so shitty_ , that you do something really fucking stupid, even though you  _know_  it’s really stupid, because hey, it feels good? And like,  _while_  you’re doing it, you’ve got two people inside you – one yelling how dumb you are, like the biggest moron and fuckup and piece of shit on the face of the earth, and the other’s just like… chill, man. Chill. It feels good. And you’ve felt so, so shitty for so l-long, that it’s just-’

Mike breaks off, covers his eyes for a moment, then gestures violently down at himself, ‘Yeah, well. You can see the results.’

For a second Don doesn’t understand, he’s skimming Mike’s scarred plastron to see what he sees, his arm and legs pocked and cratered with shallow burns – and then it clicks; not an incendiary; not blast burns. 

But there are so  _many_  and they are all over him – he feels the edges of his vision grey a little, then Mike’s hand is on his plastron. ‘Whoa. Whoa there Donnie.’

‘I’m okay,’ Don gasps, and he is, the world’s snapped back, the shock draining away, ‘Sorry. Sorry. I uh. I thought they were burns. Airbourne incendiaries or… or something.’

Mike snorts. ‘Nah, bro. Not so much.’

‘Can I..?’ Don holds out a hand. Jesus, what is it with him? Can’t stop playing doctor, even when it’s proved to him again and again how woefully untrained he is.

A divided expression comes over Mike’s face, then it falls away and he just looks resigned. Shrugging, he leans back on his crate, holds still to let Don examine him.

Arm first. Their skin isn’t quite the texture of human skin, but it’s closer to it than amphibian, smooth and cool, no scales. Mike’s colour is ashy under his natural deep green. Don traces the scars spattered like freckles over his arm, the cluster of pockmarks near his inner elbow.

‘Nothing like wearing your heart on your sleeve, huh,’ Mike comments, and Don winces.

‘Is this how you lost your arm?’ Don asks, thinking of abscesses.

Mike barks a laugh. ‘Hah. No. In a fight. I wasn’t high, but I was startin’ to hurt.’ He sighs, a bitter edge to it. ‘So I guess Leo was  _kinda_  right.’

Don feels a stab of anger, swallows it. He examines the pitts and scars on Mike’s thighs. They do look like burns, until you get right close up.

‘You uh, you inject it – whatever it is – subcutaneously, right?’

Mike nods shortly. ‘Correct.’

‘Does it… I mean, doesn’t it hurt?’

For a moment Mike’s bravado slips, and he just looks tired. Crushed flat.

‘It’s whatever’s going, Donnie. I’m not picky. And yeah, it hurts. It burns.’ He pauses, and it’s the sadness, the beat-down weariness in his next words that breaks Don’s heart. ‘But in that good kind of way.’

_Oh, Mikey._

‘Right,’ Don says, and he is aware he is trembling, blinking tears out of his eyes, his fingers circling Mike’s wrist, thumb stroking the delicate inside. ‘Right. Okay. I understand.’

Mike is looking at him with something like concern. ‘Ah, bro. Don’t look like that. Please.’ He actually lands a pretty good punch to Don’s shoulder. ‘I’m okay, all right? A lotta people here are way more fucked up than me. I’m good. I get by.’

Don surprises himself by laughing, a startled noise that rattles up past his teeth. ‘Like hell you are. But you’re right. It is okay.’ He gets to his feet – shakily – and Mike follows.

Don holds out his cup. ‘Is there any more of this stuff? I feel like I need some.’

‘Sure. S’one thing we never run out of.’

‘Great. Mike-’ Don grabs his arm just as Mike’s about to turn away, pulls him back around. ‘You’re gonna be okay, all right? I’m going to help you get off- get off that stuff. Get clean.’

Mike’s face flickers, then he nods. ‘All right.’

‘You believe me, right?’

‘I believe you believe it.’ There’s weary affection in Mike’s eyes. ‘Just… don’t make too many promises, okay Doc?’

Don nods, starts to follow him out of the supply room. The little niggle at the back of his mind pipes back up, and he frowns. ‘Hey, Mike.’

Mike raises an eye-ridge at him over his shoulder.

‘When you said ‘the  _first_  time they hurt Leo…’ what did you mean?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoyed myself a lot writing this one - and it's long - almost 2,000 words! I love Mikey, and older Mike, and I clearly have Feelings about his role in the family.
> 
> I love comments more than anything - tell me what you thought?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Getting back into it.

Rather than answer his question, Mike just puts his head down and walks on. Don wants to probe but it feels… wrong. Leo’s name seems to carry a kind of negative weight here that he doesn’t understand.

They walk, and Don feels the layout of the bunker slot into place. They pass dorms and singles, tucked furthest back into the earth. Mike points out a couple of doors as they pass, mumbling ‘Medbay,’ and ‘Hydroponics, once upon a time,’ and then they turn a corner and Don recognises the way back up to the control room, the weapons room and the deployment centre.

It’s a fortress. It’s safe and reasonably clean, it’s got thick walls and space enough for upwards of 70 people, though he’s seen barely 40. He feels a swelling pride in April, in her insane, bottomless _grit_.

The canteen hums with quiet conversation, which again dies away when they come in. Don tries to ignore the eyes on the back of his neck, and turns to the serving dishes.

They are mostly empty, a few shrivelled, egg-sized potatoes in evidence. Mike takes two, and nods to Don to do the same. When he picks them up, they sit lukewarm and distressingly light in his hand, not covering even half of his palm. Mike’s more than a head taller than him; it’s not nearly enough.

 _They’re starving_ , Don realises, his heart beating hard with the thought. This is _it_. This has been it for, what? Weeks? Months?

In front of a massive metal coffee urn, Mike is moving two steaming mugs onto his tray.

‘Here,’ Don whispers, and turning his shell to block any view from behind, presses his potatoes urgently into Mike’s hand.

‘Please,’ he says quietly, begging Mike with his eyes to accept. He gestures down at his well-muscled torso, thick thighs. ‘I’ve got reserves.’

Mike just looks at him, the hollows under his eyes deep even under his mask.

‘Pizza reserves,’ Don adds, and seeing the barest ghost of amusement flit across his brother’s face, keeps going, knowing Mike must remember how much junk food they got through whenever Leo’s back was turned.

‘Ice cream reserves. Bagels, foot-longs with meatballs, any kind of deep fried crap… Please, Mike.’

Mike’s fingers close around his as he accepts the meagre handful. ‘Fatass. Come on, let’s sit.’

Don follows, relief at the small victory flowing through him like a river.

***  
  
Don drinks his not-coffee and ignores his growling stomach, watches Mike split each potato into two, eating them so slowly it’s almost unbearable.

‘Things are bad, huh?’

Mike nods. ‘Don’t really know how much longer we got. A month maybe? Supply are pretty tight-lipped. Guess April doesn’t want to cause a panic.’

‘There are a lot of empty dorms. Were there more of you?

‘Oh yeah,’ Mike takes a mouthful of not-coffee. ‘A few years back this place was busting at the seams; there were a bunch of big break outs from some of the camps, plus refugees from the Southern territories. They mostly either joined the flying columns and got turned into worm food, or they figured they’d take their chances and went out on their own.’

There’s a silence, then he says, like an offering, ‘Raph runs with those guys.’

Don can’t help how his heart leaps when he hears Raph’s name. He knows it shows on his face too, but Mike doesn’t react. ‘Really? How is he?’

The communicator Mike wears on his belt beeps, he flips it open.

‘How about you ask him yourself?’

***

As they head toward the control room, Don can tell from Mike’s stride that he’s eager to see Raph.

‘Seems like you and Raph get on well,’ he ventures. ‘You see him much?’

Mike’s shoulders tighten defensively. ‘Raph’s okay. Last time was… ‘round six months ago I guess? He drops in sometimes, when he’s in the area. If the patrols aren’t too heavy.’

‘Good,’ Don says, ‘I’m glad.’ And he is; that Mike has someone, even sometimes, is good. It feels hopeful.

Mike grunts, then his communicator beeps again. He flips it open, then stops so suddenly Don runs into him.

‘Fuck.’

‘What?’ Don pushes around Mike to see his hand over his eyes, grimacing like he’s got a headache. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Just - Leo just got here. _Fuck_.’ He opens his eyes, pulls Don around by the shoulder and pushes him on ahead. ‘Go. Go go go, we gotta run.’

Don races along the corridor, his breath starting to come fast, a tight, worried dart in his chest.

***

Outside the metal door to the control room, Mike suddenly puts out a hand, bringing Don up short.

They’re both panting. Voices are clashing and rising inside, the words are muffled but the tone, distinct with venom, skirts the edge of the familiar. Raph and Leo at their worst.

‘Look bro, you gotta understand,’ Mike’s trying to play it cool, but dread is dripping from every word; he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. ‘A lot of crap’s different now. Leo’s… different.’

That wrongfoots Don, and he fumbles for words for a second. ‘Okay. I mean - okay.’

A heavy thud - the door shudders in its hinges.

‘Okay,’ Mike nods, puts his hand to the door, then turns back. He looks down into Don’s face as if sizing him up, gives his shoulder a brief, light squeeze and says, almost gently, ‘Don’t be scared.’

And then he shoves open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a hospital corridor just after my mum had told me my grandma was terminally ill, she told me not to be scared. That more than anything else really scared me.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Look bro, you gotta understand,’ Mike’s trying to play it cool, but dread is dripping from every word; he looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. ‘A lot of crap’s different now. Leo’s… different.’
> 
> That wrongfoots Don, and he fumbles for words for a second. ‘Okay. I mean - okay.’  
> A heavy thud - the door shudders in its hinges.
> 
> ‘Okay,’ Mike nods, puts his hand to the door, then turns back. He looks down into Don’s face as if sizing him up, gives his shoulder a brief, light squeeze and says, almost gently, ‘Don’t be scared.’
> 
> And then he shoves open the door.

Don’s bo snaps out without conscious thought, so hard vibrations jar up his wrist, sending both his brothers sprawling on the floor. He’s so angry he’s shaking.

‘ _Stop it._ ’

The most precious thing their father ever gave them; how _dare_ they?

Raph - and it must be Raph, battered and one-eyed and startlingly massive as he is, it’s unmistakably him - is bleeding from a nasty slice to his right temple and Leo is huddled on the floor gasping, his face hidden in the folds of his dark coat.

‘Holy shit.’ Raph slumps back down where he’s been trying to pick himself up, his face draining of colour. The heat behind Don’s anger dies away.

‘Hey,’ Don says, and grabs Raph’s huge trunk of an arm to pull him to his feet, aware that he’s smiling. ‘Hey Raphie.’

Before Don can say anything else Raph throws his arms around him, nearly knocking him off his feet. It’s like being hugged by a tree.

‘Donnie.’ Raph’s voice is choked. ‘Oh my god, _Donnie_.’

Squeezed so hard he can barely breathe, Don grabs a fistful of Raph’s leather jacket and gives it back in spades, gives it everything he’s got. He’s missed Raph, he realises. He _misses_ Raph.

It feels so good his eyes are a little wet when Raph lets him go.

‘Donatello?’ Leo’s voice is huskier than Don’s used to, the intonations flatter, and as Don looks into his eldest brother’s face, his stomach drops.

Scars flare out from behind Leo’s dark glasses like a river with multiple tributaries, rolling down his face and neck in swoops of shiny tissue that disappear under the collar of his coat.

‘Oh.’ Such a dumb thing to say. But he has no words appropriate for the blank white of Leo’s irises, the ragged, puckered skin of his eyelids, the extremity of his thinness - thrown more into relief as he’s smaller and slighter than Raph and Mike both. Wrapped in the dark coat that offers a glimpse of further scar tissue, some old, some less so, Leo stands there like a scarecrow.

‘Leo?’ Already reaching out to touch, to reassure, Don recognises Leo’s stance too late, how his swords hover, tasting the air. His shell hits the wall hard enough for shockwaves to crack up his spine.

Raph roars ‘Leo, NO,’ and Don can hear Mike yelling something behind him, but the blades that pin him, criss-crossing over his throat take up most of his attention.

They are sharp - he knows how sharp they are because in his secret heart of hearts he _hates_ knives, hates how messy and frightening they are, though he’s never admitted it to anyone. They lie cool and menacing against his skin, a gasp that works its way out of his throat is accompanied by a sharp sting. Don makes his breathing shallow and keeps very, very still.

‘Leo.’ The rasp of his voice is accompanied by another sting.

Over Leo’s shoulder Don can see Mike and Raph, their faces frantic. He tells him with his eyes to stand down.

‘It is me. Donatello.’

‘No,’ Leo says, and again it is the flatness in his tone that unnerves Don, the complete absence of any emotion. ‘Donatello died.’

Raph’s voice is calm, belying the sai he has aimed behind Leo’s back, at the vulnerable juncture between neck and shoulder plate. ‘ _Missing_ , Leo. We never found a body. Remember?’

Leo tilts his head, considering.

‘It’s Don,’ Mike insists. ‘He walked out of the old lair right in front of me, large as life an’ still sixteen fuckin’ years old. What you think I’ve been doing this whole time, braiding his hair? I’ve been watching him; he is who he says he is.’

‘He _is_ small,’ Leo says slowly, shifting his grip on Don, who is lightheaded, barely daring to breathe against the flat of a sword pressing against his Adam’s apple. ‘Raphael. What do you say?’

‘My word not good enough?’ Sharp and bitter, Mike’s words burn.

‘No. It isn’t.’ Though there is no emotion behind Leo’s words, they burn too. Don sees Mike’s face twist in anger, Raph’s hand go up in a stop motion.

That calm, reasonable tone again, so strange in Raphael’s deep voice. ‘I think it’s Don.’

Breathing harder now, Don’s starting to see stars. He can’t help it, he stares at Raph, pleading. Raph holds his eyes. _Trust me_.

‘Maybe he’s not our Don, I don’t know. But it looks like him, hell, he’s got that scar on his forehead from when he went over the handlebars of his bike when we were kids. It sounds like him, like - uh, like his voice. And-’ Raph’s voice cracks slightly, his eyes bright. ‘-and I swear, it _smells_ like him, I know that’s dumb.’ Raph laughs a little. ‘But how you going to fake that, huh? Let him go Leo, it’s Don.’

All of a sudden he’s released, his feet hit the floor and he stumbles, but recovers enough so he doesn’t fall flat on his ass. Mike appears beside him, white faced and furious - his hand clamps around Don’s bicep like a vice.

‘I’m fine,’ Don says, voice a croak.

‘Sure you are,’ Mike growls, fluttering nervous fingers against Don’s throat then holding the bloody tips up to him. ‘Fuckin’ lunatic.’

Leo appears behind Mike like a shadow, and at a low ‘Michelangelo,’ Mike backs off, falling back against the wall where Raph is resting, holding a rag to his bloody face.

‘My apologies,’ Leo says, sheathing his swords and bowing low. ‘I am cautious.’

It takes Don a few seconds to formulate a response. ‘That’s okay.’

For a few seconds uneasy silence stretches between them.

‘It’s good to see you,’ Don tries, and then blushes hot, cursing himself.

A snort from Raph. ‘It’s fine, Don. Asshole here ain’t sensitive about it, are ya asshole?’

Leo doesn’t react with so much as a flicker, but moves slowly closer to Don, one questing hand outstretched.

Don steps forward carefully to meet him, his fingers hovering over, then touching down on Leo’s arm. Leo stops, uncertainty flickering across his face, clearly unsure where to go from here. Don swallows the lump in his throat and takes Leo’s hands, his poor ruined brother, and gently guides them up to his own face.

Leo runs his fingers over Don’s temples, his cheeks, his mouth. Pays special attention to his eyes, checking first one, then the other. Up so close, Don sees a confusion of emotions flit across Leo’s face without landing.

Leo’s hands cease their mapping, fall down to rest on Don’s shoulders. He says in a strangled whisper, ‘Master Splinter always said you’d come back.’

It’s like Raph can’t help himself, he almost spits ‘You don’t get to say his name, Leo.’

Don feels Leo jerk, sees his face spasm with something - pain? Anger? - before he wheels to face him.

Mike shoves away from the wall, backing toward the door.

‘Yeah, I gotta - I’m gonna split. Much as it’s been awesome and everything. I’ll catch you guys later.’ He’s sweating, his pallor more pronounced, though remembering his face before they came in here Don’s not sure if it’s _that_ , or _them_.

Raph grimaces and looks at his feet; Leo raises his eye ridges, says, ‘Still?’ to which Mike replies with an edge in his voice, ‘Yeah, Leo. Still.’

‘Hey,’ Don says, and Mike looks at him with that guarded look he thought had gone. Don goes over to him, gives his shoulder a friendly shove that hides a quick, quiet squeeze. ‘Clean up your room, huh bro? I don’t wanna sleep with the bugs tonight.’

Gratitude flashes in Mike’s eyes; he rests a hand briefly on Don’s and says ‘But I thought you liked trash, dude? I made that pile of garbage just for you.’

‘Thanks a bunch,’ Don says, grinning, and with a curl of his lips, Mike’s gone.

Raph and Leo stand dumbly, neither of them seeming to know what to say.

‘Well,’ Don says, and asks a question that isn’t a question, indicating the air between them. ‘Are we going to talk about this?’


End file.
